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In a study of archival records, Røstvik and Fyfe evaluate how the induction of women into the Royal Society in London has affected publication records since 1665. In 1787, astronomer Caroline Herschel’s description of a comet was the first report in Philosophical Transactions by a woman. Over time, while membership by women has increased, their participation as publishers, referees, and editors has not. "[I]n 1955, 2.8% of submitted papers were refereed by a woman; in 1985, only 0.3% were."

"This blog post is a personal account of sexism, harassment, and racism that I and some anonymous members of the computer architecture community have experienced. We are sharing these experiences in part because of encouragement by male colleagues who found them shocking. We are all still here because the rewards and great colleagues out weigh the bad experiences. However, we want to raise community awareness and instigate change.

Men do not experience our community the same way women do. The power dynamics of academia give individuals a lot of power, e.g., hallway conversations and recommendation letters greatly influence career-defining decisions. These dynamics demand the highest ethical practices and vigorous attention to limit the influence of factors that have nothing to do with research quality and impact. We want every individual to take more responsibility for our culture and meritocracy, fostering research excellence by making our community a more welcoming place for women, underrepresented minorities, and everyone else."

"Sexual assaults, harassment, gender and racial biases occur with frightening regularity for women in academia. In spite of increasing awareness of these problems, there is very little about what the Title IX process looks like from a personal perspective.

Participating in a Title IX case is nothing short of soul crushing. Your university will not support you, you will be the subject of gossip and, perhaps most distressingly, you will be intimidated and retaliated against for your honesty. Retaliation is illegal under Title IX, but not only does it occur, it is cornerstone of the process by which academics are silenced and, I suspect, the reason I could find so few first hand accounts of participating in a case."

"The player on my left has the biochemist Maud Menten’s career well on track. Suddenly another player slaps a “stupid patriarchy” card on Menten’s head, and she has to earn her doctorate all over again. So goes a novel card game devoted to women in science and engineering, designed to highlight these unsung researchers and the barriers and boons that women in these fields experience.

Menten (1879-1960) was one of the first women in Canada to earn a medical degree atop her PhD. But at the time women weren’t allowed to do research at Canadian universities; she had to conduct her famous work on enzyme kinetics in the United States and Germany. Menten is one of 21 pioneering women scientists, mostly from North America, featured in the game — the latest in a series that began in 2000 with a biodiversity game called Phylo. The card deck was developed by an innovative science outreach programme at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia (UBC), in collaboration with Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) at Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University (SFU). Players complete researchers’ careers by collecting cards for achievements such as degrees, and try to avoid setbacks — such as the “tokenism” card, which wipes a scientist in play off the table."

"The sciences are defined by those who push past the bounds of human knowledge and break down the thought barriers of their time. But by and large, it’s men—mostly white ones—whose achievements are recorded in the history books. We celebrate them as geniuses who upended our understanding of the cosmos, the planet and ourselves.

Smithsonian.com is sharing the stories of women scientists who also changed the world, but were written out of history. It was a woman (atmospheric researcher Eunice Foote) who first outlined the global greenhouse effect; a woman (FDA pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey) who stood between America and an epidemic of birth defects; and a woman (astronomer Maria Mitchell) who named comets and shaped the early field of astronomy.

These pioneers paved the way for future generations of women scientists and explorers. But spotlighting their stories is about more than just augmenting women’s history. It’s about understanding the cultural attitudes, historical forces and social realities that made science what it is today—and what it will be tomorrow."

"In Iran, nearly 70% of university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women—a higher percentage than in any other country. Nearby Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are close, each boasting over 60% female graduates in science, still more of the rest of the world.

Young women in science are the rule, not the exception, in the Middle East. At least a third of STEM trained talent across the Muslim world is female, writes Saadia Zahidi in her new book Fifty Million Rising, which tracks the workplace progress achieved by Muslim women since the turn of the century."